Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:14 pmWhat is a "metaphysical truth" except those you describe as such. Is there such a thing, and why should any truth be qualified as metaphysical? Truth is what it is; it doesn't need any qualifying additions. It's also debatable if metaphysics still actively exists or archived as an old discipline worthy of academic study only. Of what value is metaphysics to life except as thought cathedrals populated by the like-minded, not unlike the virtual reality world of a computer game.
Good question, and that is beyond doubt. The simplest way that I have found to broach the topic is to refer to *meaning*. It seems to me that the apperception of 'higher meaning' of the sort that informs everything that pertains to higher culture and to higher values, can be understood as having a metaphysical origin. And I think that one very good way to approach the topic is to consider how it is that meaning is conveyed through works of art, but especially of the calibre of Shakespeare. But here is an interesting aspect of this and I say this tentatively and with a certain caution: when you read Shakespeare you could only receive the 'meaning' that is essential or fundamental to his work by 'translating' it into lower-level and rather mundane interpretations. Your description of the 'meaning' of the play as a treatise on the green-eyed monster jealousy and the practical teaching that a captain like Othello should not have been so short-sighted and non-circumspect, is a reduction to very low levels of meaning. But there is it seems to me a reason why the play resonates so profoundly in so many who encounter it, and that reason (I suggest with a degree of humility) does not appear on your radar. It takes place on a frequency which your 'mechanics' cannot perceive.
Something
extraordinary is presented as being lost in that play. The loss is devastating. And I am sure that you catch my drift.
Now my larger point has very very little to do with you. It has to do with my developing understanding about what happens to *us* when we disconnect, and I do mean this literally, from a connection to the Divine. So I would then have to point out that there are various ways-and-means by which one does make that connection. There are very basic levels and there are higher levels. The Saints, for example, demonstrate connection at a high level. Their methods and what they say about what they do, what they receive, and what it means, can be studied and it can also be imitated. That is, one can apply the method to one's own life and, resulting from that, establish or strengthen that *connection*. Yet I fully acknowledge many very 'low' methods of connection, some of them very unappealing to me personally. But the topic, in my mind, is the connection and that as a 'first principle'.
So what I have been working with, and for some time now, is my perception (which I believe to be accurate and also fair) has to do with examining and trying to understand what happens to people, and a given person, who relinquishes what I refer to as spiritual connection with real entity and real power (God is the term we all use) that is metaphysical to ourselves. What I notice, speaking generally, is not positive result but more often than not negative result. But remember that I am speaking of real and bona fide connection (through prayer, through a meditative mental orientation, through conduct and orientation)
to God as a real thing, which is different from, let's say, the God that is
unreal for you (and some other here). You see? Your description of God is to make God not-God. And doing this you separate yourself from the 'possibility' of God. Yes, you do this ultra-rationally -- philosophically as you-plural often say -- but my own sense is your method of philosophy is in the larger part a 'sham' or self-deceptive. But this of course is my opinion and I cannot see how it could have much weight in your eyes.
I have tried to make it clear that my larger endeavor has to do with my sense that when an entire civilization, effectively, disconnects from the metaphysical glue that brought it into existence, that the dissolution of that civilization is a necessary result. Obviously, I am interested here in something rather hard to put a label on. It could be described as an underlying connecting principle or purpose. I am certainly not the first one to notice what happens when cultural and social binding comes undone. But isn't that a topic that needs to be broached? And that is the reason why the topic is being broached -- but not necessarily among people with your mind-set. You seem to set your objective on undermining the *possibility of belief*, the possibility of receiving from and connecting with 'higher metaphysical entity'. This is your chief objective! You work to establish block to that because those blocks have been established -- constructed -- in you.
And this is why I suggest that you are to your audience what Iago was to Othello. Here I have extracted as it were a special and rather pointed meaning. How could I prove what I suggest? I do not think I could *prove* it in the sense that you understand proofs. Again, you are not relevant to me. What is relevant to me is what people do with ideas. Ideas have consequences. It is a simple statement with tremendously relevant levels of implication.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 1:46 pmThere is another, a deeper, way to see the play of Othello. It has to do with the notion of 'sacred marriage'. You know, Christ as the bridegroom and the body of the Church as the bride.
I doubt Shakespeare thought of it in that way. From what I read, he was a very practical kind of guy who wasn't in the least concerned if his plays were lost to posterity! I see your situation as one desperately trying to make connections that don't exist in order to rinse some kind of customized meaning out of it. You obviously can if you want to, but the meaning you derive from it is all your own.
Well, what I can say here is that I'd suggest looking into Shakespeare more deeply. I took the advice of Harold Bloom -- a very accomplished Shakespeare scholar -- who recommended about 15 different titles. Reading some of them I gained an understanding of the degree to which Shakespeare was steeped in 'the older metaphysics'. These have become, I came to see, largely invisible to us unless they are pointed out by those who have devoted their lives to this study. One I'd recommend is
Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays by Ruth Leila Anderson. Another is
Shakespeare in the Light of the Sacred by Martin Lings. One other and very good is
The Seventeenth Century Background by Basil Willey.
At least in my own case I could not have *successfully* been able to understand what was actually being written about if I'd not been exposed to the people who really
really went into it.
I see your situation as one desperately trying to make connections that don't exist in order to rinse some kind of customized meaning out of it.
And I see yours as one who in another sort of desperation seeks to remove or subtract a whole world of meaning which, for various reasons, can no longer be perceived by you. But here I am repeating the general thesis of this present post.
"Friend, look to ’t."
As is very common on philosophy forums, you seek to create mystery which aspires to some surface profundity in the belief that meaning will follow. Maybe I'm wrong but so far, that's how it looks to me.
Similarly, you have been provided with *acid* of a mental sort and it has been demonstrated to you by certain influential persons what you can do with these acids! You do not really have an substantial standing within the entire world you inhabit, but you do have a certain amount of youthful force which could also be described as 'folly'. Proud, insolent, certain, you rush forward far too quickly! and you trample so much of value without fully understanding what you do.
Now I am aware that I am not only speaking to you (how can I really know what you are about?) but I am speaking very generally to trends and 'moods' that seem very operative today. So take it for what it is worth.
How can you NOT see beyond singular positions -- are you in a prolonged battle with your past?
